Rate My Professor Kenneth Kishida

Kenneth T. Kishida serves as Professor of Biology at Wake Forest University, holding the inaugural Boswell Presidential Chair of Neuroscience and Society as well as the Wells Fargo Faculty Scholar title. He maintains joint appointments in the Wake Forest School of Medicine's Departments of Translational Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, Neurosurgery, and Biomedical Engineering. As a first-generation college student raised by a single parent in a diverse community, Kishida earned his B.S. in Genetics with a minor in Philosophy from the University of California, Davis in 1999. He obtained his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Baylor College of Medicine in 2006, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in computational neuroscience. Joining Wake Forest in 2016, he advanced to full professor, pioneering interdisciplinary research that spans neuroscience, psychiatry, neurosurgery, ethics, and behavioral science.

Kishida's research investigates the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying human learning, decision-making, and conscious experience. His laboratory develops and applies novel techniques for sub-second resolution measurements of neuromodulators such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine directly from the human brain during awake neurosurgical procedures. Integrating these neurochemical signals with computational models, functional neuroimaging, and behavioral tasks, his work elucidates how brain chemistry governs subjective phenomenal experience, choice behavior, and mental health outcomes. Kishida has authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Neuron, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, PLoS Biology, and Science Advances. Notable contributions include "Subsecond dopamine fluctuations in human striatum encode superposed error signals about actual and counterfactual reward" (PNAS, 2016) and "Sub-second dopamine and serotonin signaling in human striatum during perceptual decision-making" (Neuron, 2020). His innovations have garnered over 2,700 citations, influencing fields from basic neuroscience to clinical applications in Parkinson's disease and psychiatric disorders. Through the Neuroscience and Society initiative, Kishida fosters cross-disciplinary collaborations and mentors students on the societal implications of brain science.